Once Embraced by Chris Christie, New Jersey’s Muslims Feel Betrayed

Gov. Chris Christie, once hailed as a defender of local Muslims, now opposes resettling Syrian refugees in New Jersey.Credit
Cheryl Senter/Associated Press

The invitation arrived by email, bearing the seal of the State of New Jersey and the name of its new governor, Chris Christie. It asked a select group of Muslim leaders to break the daily Ramadan fast at Mr. Christie’s home, and began with a traditional Muslim salutation.

“Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be with you),” the greeting, from summer 2010, read. “Wishing you a happy and blessed Ramadan.”

With the gathering, at an evening meal known as Iftar, Mr. Christie opened what Muslim leaders recall as a period of exceptional warmth between the state’s sizable Muslim community and a prominent Republican. The governor became a fierce defender of local Muslims, rebuking his party in forceful terms for its hostility to a proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, and denouncing what he called “the crazies” on the right for attacking a Muslim lawyer Mr. Christie had selected for a judgeship.

But as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination half a decade later, Mr. Christie’s ties to Muslim leaders in New Jersey have grown deeply strained. The governor has recast himself as a relentless warrior against terrorism, with little patience for what he calls “politically correct” national security policy. Among some community leaders, who saw Mr. Christie as a rare Republican who rejected alarmist, broad-brush rhetoric about Islam, a sense of betrayal has set in.

Most distressing, to advocates for New Jersey’s Muslim community, has been Mr. Christie’s rigid stance on refugees fleeing Syria: Citing his distrust of President Obama’s administration to screen them for security risks, Mr. Christie has called for a full stop to the settling of refugees in the United States.

Community leaders say Mr. Christie has also missed opportunities to speak out, in the thunderous tones they have come to expect, about what they see as flagrantly hateful remarks from other Republicans. Donald J. Trump has called for intensive monitoring of Muslim-Americans, and has repeated a widely debunked myth that throngs of Muslims in Jersey City celebrated on Sept. 11, 2001.

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Mohammed Hameeduddin, with coat and tie, at prayer in 2012, when he was the mayor of Teaneck. “He has abandoned us and moved on,” he said of Mr. Christie.Credit
Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

Mr. Christie has responded in restrained terms, stating that he had no recollection of mass celebrations in New Jersey, and warning in a statement against an “indiscriminate” crackdown on Muslim communities. But while he has called Mr. Trump’s account “factually wrong,” Mr. Christie has said it would be pointless to confront the wealthy provocateur more aggressively.

To some Muslims in the state, who viewed Mr. Christie as an energetic and unexpected champion, his comments about refugees and his cautious response to the emboldened hard right have come as a disorienting letdown.

Mohamed Younes, president of the American Muslim Union, a group based in North Jersey, said Mr. Christie had become unrecognizable to him as a presidential candidate.

In the past, Mr. Younes said, the governor attended forums hosted by his group and hosted Ramadan gatherings where he described New Jersey as a proudly inclusive state.

Mr. Christie impressed Muslim leaders soon after taking office in 2010, when he was drawn into a controversy over plans to construct an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, near the World Trade Center site. Opponents branded it the “ground zero mosque,” and national conservatives rallied against it.

At a news conference that August — 10 days before the first Ramadan gathering at the governor’s mansion — Mr. Christie warned Republicans against tarring “all of Islam with the Mohamed Atta brush,” a reference to one of the hijackers who attacked the twin towers.

“What I hear now, that’s not him,” Mr. Younes said. “There are a lot of people really angry. I think people who do not know him, they think he is ridiculous, like Trump.”

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Sohail Mohammed as he was sworn in as a Superior Court judge in 2011; Gov. Chris Christie nominated him.Credit
Wayne Parry/Associated Press

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national advocacy organization that identified Mr. Christie in a 2013 report as an exemplary Republican, has condemned the governor for his comments on refugees. Jim Sues, director of the group’s New Jersey affiliate, said in an interview that Mr. Christie had helped cast “a shadow of suspicion and fear over all Muslims.”

Mr. Christie has drawn rebukes from non-Muslims, too: Former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, also a Republican, said Mr. Christie was wrong to take such an uncompromising view of the refugee crisis.

Mr. Kean, who led the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, said a refugee crackdown would be a propaganda coup for the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and might undermine relations between law enforcement and American Muslims.

“I think that kind of attitude helps ISIS,” Mr. Kean said in an interview. Of Mr. Christie, he added, “I like him and I admire him, but I don’t agree with him on this.”

Mr. Christie has defended his tough language on national security and the refugee situation as a matter of plain speaking. He has emphasized that his objections to admitting refugees stem not from their faith, but rather from doubts about the Obama administration’s managerial competence to filter out dangerous people arriving from a war zone.

At the Council on Foreign Relations last week, the governorsaid that he trusted American Muslims to understand that his opposition to admitting refugees was motivated solely by security concerns. (A spokesman for him said state officials had discussed security with religious leaders, including Muslim clerics, after of the recent attacks in Paris.)

Noting that New Jersey had one of the nation’s largest Muslim communities, he said Muslims were “good, faithful Americans” and “not nearly as sensitive” as opinion leaders in Washington believe.

“They’re Muslim-Americans, and they understand that the safety and security of their family is at risk,” Mr. Christie said. “Just the way the safety and security of Catholics are at risk, Protestants are at risk, Buddhists are at risk when the American homeland is not safe and not secure.”

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While Mr. Christie’s policy views frustrate some former admirers, they have not set him apart from most of his Republican rivals. No Republican presidential hopefuls have endorsed letting Syrian refugees into the United States, except perhaps for some Syrian Christians.

Most of Mr. Christie’s opponents have distanced themselves from Mr. Trump’s incendiary ideas, but until recently the leading candidates have avoided clashing directly. Only lately have a few — including Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio and former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida — taken on Mr. Trump more aggressively.

Mr. Christie stiffened his criticism of Mr. Trump on Monday, saying in a CNN interview that the real estate developer’s Sept. 11 tale was “just wrong.” But he declined to rebuke Mr. Trump in more pointed terms, telling a reporter, “Everybody else can determine what they think is outrageous or not outrageous.”

If Mr. Christie is comfortably in the mainstream of the Republican presidential field, Muslims in New Jersey say they recall when he once stood well apart from his party, as an openly ferocious advocate on their behalf.

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Mr. Christie speaking to reporters in New Hampshire this week as he seeks the Republican nomination for president.Credit
Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times

In 2012, after the revelation that the New York Police Department had conducted surveillance of Muslims in his state, Mr. Christie criticized the police for overstepping its territory, and established a Muslim outreach committee headed by the New Jersey attorney general.

Perhaps most significant to New Jersey Muslims was Mr. Christie’s 2011 appointment of a Muslim lawyer, Sohail Mohammed, to a Superior Court judgeship in Passaic County. When Mr. Mohammed’s nomination met with resistance from the far right, and insinuations that he might be influenced by Shariah law, Mr. Christie erupted.

Mr. Mohammed, he said, was an “extraordinary American.” The alarmism about Shariah, he said, was “crap.”

“It’s just crazy,” Mr. Christie said at an outdoor news conference in July 2011. “And I’m tired of dealing with the crazies. It’s just unnecessary to be accusing this guy of things just because of his religious background.”

Mr. Mohammed’s nomination was approved.

Mohammed Hameeduddin, a councilman in Teaneck, N.J., who was the township’s first Muslim mayor, said he had been “very moved” by Mr. Christie’s defense of the judicial nomination. At an Iftar event he attended at the governor’s mansion, Mr. Hameeduddin, who is a Democrat, said Mr. Christie had spoken gracefully about the common American identity of the attendees and the welcoming nature of his state.

The Iftar invitations stopped coming a few years ago, several Muslim leaders said. Mr. Christie’s office said the last official Ramadan dinner was in 2012.

“He has abandoned us and has moved on,” Mr. Hameeduddin said, adding, “He’s going more toward the position of the national Republican primary voter.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 3, 2015, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Once Embraced by Christie, State’s Muslims Feel Betrayed . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe